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Call for submissions: The Radical Americas Journal

By ucyllsp, on 15 September 2016

The Radical Americas Network is delighted to announce a call for submissions for the brand new Radical Americas Journal.  Submissions from both early career and established scholars worldwide will be welcomed. Work in a number of different formats will be considered; in addition to peer-reviewed articles, the journal will run a variety of regular features,including opinion pieces, photo essays, reviews and archival notes.

In the first instance, please submit abstracts of 250-300 words to radicalamericas@gmail.com– when submitting, please indicate whether the work is to be peer reviewed as an article or whether you would like to submit something in a different format. Articles for peer review should be between 4,000 and 12,000 words; other pieces should be between 2,000 and 5,000 words. Please consiult UCL Press Guidelies for authors in advance of submission: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ucl-press/publish/docs/Guidelines_for_Authors

About the Radical Americas Journal

The Radical Americas Journal explores the historical, political and social contexts that have underpinned radicalism in the Americas, engaging fully with the cross-currents of activism which connect North, Central and South America along with the Caribbean. The interconnected histories of power and protest are rarely contained within national boundaries. A full understanding of radicalism in the Americas, therefore, requires that we make the widespread rhetoric about the need for hemispheric scholarly approaches a reality. While we also offer articles, reviews and other content which focus on national or sub-national case studies, they are presented in a transnational framework.

Our definition of radicalism is broad. Taking inspiration from the words of José Martí, cited above, we understand radicalism to include any action or interpretation which “goes to the roots”, and we welcome all scholarship which takes a radical approach, even if it is not concerned with the study of radical activism per se. Any work which provides a truly systemic critique of existing structures of power, or challenges conventional interpretations of the past, will find a home at the Radical Americas Journal.

Despite disciplinary divides, scholarship on all regions of the Americas has recently been characterised by a preoccupation with culture and cultural analysis. This domination has come at the expense of interpretations which favour economic or social factors, though there are some signs that the impact of the global financial crisis has begun to reverse that trend. Our position is that the kind of holistic critique we hope to promote can never be achieved by isolating a single variable. For that reason we are particularly interested in work which attempts the difficult and painstaking task of fully integrating different facets of human experience, including economic, social, political and cultural factors.

Why one Early Career Researcher decided to publish in open access

By ucldnpi, on 15 June 2016

I’m delighted to be working with UCL Press on the publication of Four Histories about Early Dutch Football 1910–1920: Constructing Discourses. This work will use some of the research I conducted for my doctoral studies, combined with new research and approaches, to provide four new histories about football in Dutch life in the early part of the twentieth century. The work interweaves concerns about the role and purpose of history today, with questions about the nature of modern sport and its interaction with culture, politics, and society. A central aim of the book Piercey 800pxis to promote a new form of history that acknowledges that the subjectivity of the author (and reader) is not only inevitable, but also useful in the development of history as a democratic tool for the future.

I was particularly keen to work with UCL Press because of their commitment to Open Access publication, which I see as a revolutionary development in academic publishing. Free online publication means that my work and ideas will be available to as many people as possible, without the barriers often in palace in traditional academic publishing models. I’m pleased to be taking part at an early stage in this change in academic publishing. In addition, Open Access publishing has given me the opportunity to provide additional data and content online which will encourage other individuals to create their own histories about the past – which is a central theme of my work.

As a young academic, and first time author, I have loved the encouragement given by everyone at UCL Press in this project, from the initial proposal to the final stages of publication. At every stage the team has always been ready to listen to suggestions and to guide me through the difficulties and surprises involved in bringing my ideas to a wider audience. While the staff are UCL Press are ambitious in developing an ever increasing number of titles, I have always felt that the team has taken a hands on approach to the process and both understand and value the deeply personal nature of their authors’ contributions. Happy Birthday!

About the author

Nicholas Piercey is Honorary Research Associate in UCL’s Department of Dutch in the UCL School of European Languages, Culture & Society. His first book, Four Histories of Early Dutch Football, 1910-1920: Constructing Discourses (UCL Press) will be published on October 2016. Find out more at http://www.ucl.ac.uk/ucl-press/browse-books/four-histories-about-early-dutch-football.

Jewish Historical Studies Joins UCL Press: A Letter from the Editor

By uclhmib, on 12 February 2016

Jewish Historical Studies coverJewish Historical Studies: Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England is now jointly published with UCL Press. Why is this such excellent news and of historical significance in itself?

In 2013 the Jewish Historical Society of England (JHSE) celebrated its 120th anniversary.  It is one of the longest-running historical associations in the world and its journal, commonly referred to as Transactions, began in 1893-94. While its publication has been somewhat irregular (a few world wars happened to intervene), it is famous for featuring some of the most outstanding scholarship in Jewish history – well before Jewish Studies became institutionalised as an academic field. The JHSE is a hybrid: its membership includes full-time academics, part-time scholars and teachers, and those whose livelihoods lie totally outside of education. The JHSE comprises students and retirees, doctors, lawyers, accountants, journalists, musicians, artists, Jews and non-Jews. A rather large share of members are historians whose work engages Jews in the English-speaking world. As an organisation the JHSE has always aspired to promote the best and most current research in Anglo-Jewish history while its remit ranges broadly in Jewish Studies.

Until its most recent issue, Volume 47, Transactions was published privately by the Society. Starting with volume 44, my first as editor, a standardised peer-review process was introduced along with an editorial board. Whereas in the past (almost) all submissions to the journal appeared in print, this is no longer the case. We maintain the central purpose of Transactions – publishing papers that were presented to meetings of the Society – and also provide a venue for the types of scholarship and issues pertaining to research of concern to the Society generally.

In the grand scheme of things, the journal is thriving. Since the presidencies of Ada Rapoport-Albert (UCL) and Piet Van Boxel (Oxford), who initiated a shift to University College London for the Society’s functions, attendance at meetings and conferences has surged. Some fabulous younger scholars, such as David Dee of Leicester’s De Montfort University, Julie Mell of North Carolina State University, and Philip Nothaft of All Souls, Oxford, have published in, and become vital forces in the evolving shape of Transactions. Historians who are at the cutting edge of their respective fields, such as Alex Knapp in ethnomusicology, David Ruderman in intellectual history, Sharman Kadish in material culture, and Susan Tananbaum and David Feldman in social history, have published their latest scholarship in the journal.

Under UCL Press it will appear in print and on-line as an open-access publication, following a path that will make the journal even more attractive for aspiring contributors. (Submissions are piling up in my inbox.)

The next issue, volume 48, which will appear in December 2016, will have a substantial section guest-edited by Theodore Dunkelgrunn of Cambridge, concerning the formidable career of Solomon Schechter. The volume also will comprise ‘regular’ articles, book reviews, and at least one review essay.

    What is it, though, that makes Transactions different? One aspect is apparent in the current issue, which is dedicated to the late Professor David Cesarani of Royal Holloway (1956-2015) (to which we would add the Hebraized acronym z”l, ‘of blessed memory’). While many academic journals refrain from obituaries or any form of institutional recognition of deceased members, we regard this as part of our mission. Is there a historian anywhere who does not find such material helpful, or of interest? We also include information about the life of the JHSE: its current central group and branches, and those who appear at its meetings. Along with reviews of books, now expertly handled by Lars Fischer, there are ‘research reports’, often containing primary source material, which is not the standard fare of academic journals. We are, in the end, a scholarly and academic publication, but proudly more than that.

 As editor of Transactions and on behalf of the JHSE, I wish to thank Lara Speicher, Alison Major and their colleagues for making possible the relationship between the UCL Press and the journal. The well-being of the JHSE and an increasingly robust Transactions are mutually beneficial. To quote that great sage, Rick of Casablana:  ‘I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.’

About the author

Michael Berkowitz is General Editor of Jewish Historical Studies and Professor of Modern Jewish History, UCL.

This post was originally posted in UCL Press news in February 2016.

The Museum, The Centenary, The Book

By Alison Fox, on 4 June 2015

Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology cover

 Today’s guest post is written by Alice Stevenson, Curator of the Petrie Museum of Egyptian and Sudanese Archaeology.

About a year ago, it dawned on the staff of UCL’s Petrie Museum that the centenary of our opening was not far off. To mark the occasion the team decided that a souvenir publication would be fitting tribute for such an internationally renowned collection. Time to produce such a book, however, was short. Fortunately, UCL Press received the proposal positively and the scramble to pull together the volume began.

With upwards of 80,000 objects in the collection, more than a century of important discoveries and thousands of years of history to engage with, finding suitable content wasn’t hard. Deciding what could fit into 120 pages was. All that we could do was sketch out the contours of the museum’s holdings, from the Stone Age axes to the medieval and Islamic artefacts, and from the smallest trinkets to the largest monuments. We also wanted to challenge assumptions about the nature of the collection because it is far broader than the term ‘Egyptian archaeology’ might popularly suggest: there are objects from Sudan, Korea, China, Greece, Palestine, Syria, India and Iraq for instance. Additionally, we sought to showcase the unusual: artefacts made from extra-terrestrial materials, objects fished out from dark, flooded burial chambers and long-lost things rediscovered in unlikely places.

Image from Petrie book

What really drove the story-telling, however, were the characters whose lives became entangled with the museum’s history. They include the adventurous Flinders Petrie, a man who Lawrence of Arabia once described as ‘enormous fun’ and who Howard Carter credited as turning him into a true excavator; Margaret Murray, an Egyptology lecturer at UCL and a significant influence on the development of Wicca; Gertrude Caton-Thompson, a pioneering archaeologist who went on to prove that Great Zimbabwe was the work of indigenous Africans; and Ali Suefi, Flinders Petrie’s Egyptian right-hand man and discoverer of many of the most prized objects in the museum.

To even attempt to do justice to this eclectic assemblage and history requires many voices and a range of expertise. It is therefore thanks to all of our contributors for swiftly penning their sections, to UCL Press and Media Services for their professionalism and to the Friends of the Petrie Museum for financial support, that this publication has come together in such good shape and on such a tight deadline. And with over 1300 Open Access downloads in the first week, we’re off to a great start!

Alice Stevenson, Curator, The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology